Google Play Music for Desktop Has a New Interface

Google Play Music's web app switched to Material Design and has a new interface that closely resembles the mobile UI. The left sidebar is now a hamburger-style menu, photos are bigger, there's more white space and everything looks like a mobile app stretched out to fit a much bigger screen.

"We're moving towards making the web feel more like an app and less like a series of web pages strung together by links," said Google UX designer Bryan Rea. "The new header, the slick transition as you scroll, the collapsible nav, new animations, these all feel like things you expect in an app not on the web. For the increased focus on big, immersive artwork, when you're listening to music, you can get lost in it (in a good way). With the new album and playlist pages, you enter an immersive world focused on the music you're enjoying."

YouTube Discontinues Collections

YouTube had a feature that allowed you to group subscriptions and create collections. This feature will soon be removed: "on 5/20/15, we'll discontinue Collections, as we'll focus on other efforts to make your subscriptions more enjoyable."

"A collection is a group of subscriptions you can create to help you organize and view content from the channels you're subscribed to. Collections can be created by themes (like 'basketball' or 'music')," explains YouTube.

Collections could be created, deleted and edited from the subscription manager. In many ways, YouTube collections were just like folders in a feed reader.

If you want to use a feed reader to manage your YouTube subscriptions, you can export them to OPML and import the file into your favorite feed reader. Open the subscriptions manager, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click "Export subscriptions". Another options is to use this link.

YouTube Switches to Roboto

After a few months of experiments, YouTube changed its font from Arial to Roboto. In addition to Android, many other Google apps and services use Roboto, a typeface designed in-house at Google by Christian Robertson.

Here are some screenshots from Firefox for Windows:

I've switched back to Arial and got this GIF animation:

Here's a screenshot from Chrome for Windows: it looks quite different.

Browsers like Firefox and Chrome show a lot of information about fonts: you can select some text, right-click, pick "inspect element", switch to the Fonts or Computed tab and find the fonts that are used.

9to5Google.com says that "the font comes in several weights, but the one Google has gone with is slightly lighter than what users may be used to compared to the Arial font. This will surely lead to some complaints about it being harder to read".

New Gmail Login Page

Gmail has a new login page. When you first sign in, Google only asks you to enter you email address. Click Next to enter your password and Google might show your name and your Google+ profile photo.

It's not clear if Google only shows the name and the profile photo for your Gmail accounts. I tried various email addresses and Gmail only displayed a generic image.

{ Thanks, Maurice Wahba. }

Google Translate Community Uses Material Design

Google Translate Community has a new interface powered by Material Design. It's a site that helps Google improve the quality of Google Translate. "Your help will enhance translations for millions of users," informs Google.

The new interface is more colorful and uses more images. There's a hamburger-style menu, a section that shows your stats and the badges you've earned. You can select 2 to 5 languages, including a few languages that aren't yet available in Google Translate like: Cantonese, Cherokee, Corsican, Tibetan, Guarani, Hawaiian and more. Then you only need to translate some phrases or rate translations.

Google also offers a simplified version of the Translate Community site, which uses the old interface.

New Menu for Desktop Google Maps

If you like Google Maps' mobile apps for Android and iOS, there's a good news: the desktop site now has a similar interface. The search box has a small icon for directions and another icon for the navigation menu, which lets you enable layers for satellite imagery, traffic, transit, bicycling, terrain, use My Maps, share maps, print maps and more.

The new hamburger-style menu adds features that were previously scattered in at least 4 other places: 2 menus at the bottom of the page, a satellite thumbnail and the search box.

Here's the old interface: the "getting around" card for layers, a small thumbnail for switching to satellite imagery (still available in the new UI), a help menu and a gear menu for sharing maps, Google Web History and search settings.

Another change is that you can switch to the lite mode, which replaces the old Google Maps:

Google Removes Reading Level Filter

Last month, Google removed search filters for visited page. Now it's time for a new advanced search feature to be removed: reading level. This feature was introduced back in 2010 to let you find search results that are better suited for you. "Sometimes you may want to limit your search results to a specific reading level. For instance, a junior high school teacher looking for content for her students or a second-language learner might want web pages written at a basic reading level. A scientist searching for the latest findings from the experts may want to limit results to those at advanced reading levels," explained Google.

In February, I noticed that the reading level feature had a bug and no longer allowed you to restrict results to "advanced reading level" pages. Instead of fixing the bug, Google removed yet another advanced search feature.

Reading level is no longer available in the search tools dropdown or in the advanced search page. Verbatim is the only remaining filtering option and I'm sure it will be removed soon. Hopefully, Google won't remove time filters, which are more popular and easier to understand.

Here are some screenshots from last month:

Celebrating 10 Years of YouTube

Cross-posted from the YouTube Trends Blog

On April 23, 2005, history was made. An 18-second clip about how cool elephants are was shot at the San Diego Zoo and uploaded to a then-private video sharing site called YouTube.

That May, YouTube launched in beta before becoming available to the wider public six months later. Ten years have now passed, and that site has grown to become not just the biggest video platform on the web—a community of more than one billion people, where hundreds of millions of hours of video are watched and billions of views are generated every day —but one of the largest and most diverse collections of self-expression in history.

YouTube is a portrait of our global culture, seen through the lenses and perspectives of people around the world. It is a portrait built by a creative community of bold and fearless individuals. Built by comedians, gamers, activists, artists, performers, teachers, and pranksters. Built with cats and rainbows and blenders and ninjas and unicorns. It was built on the silly. It was built on the profound. It was built by you.

And 10 years in, you continue to redefine how the world experiences music, entertainment, and news. How the world laughs and how the world learns. How we shape political events and how we connect over the things we love.

You’ve helped turn creators into the biggest names in entertainment. You’ve given people opportunities to share their voice and talent no matter where they are from or what their age or point of view. You built a world where little ideas can bring about amazing things and where amazing things can bring little delights to each of us.

So in honor of our 10th birthday, we’re celebrating you, our YouTube community. Every day over the next 26 days, we’ll take a look back at some of the most memorable moments, from the silly to the profound, that you’ve shared on YouTube in the last 10 years. It’s YouTube from A to Z. Literally.

You can follow our celebration throughout the month of May on our YouTube Trends blog.